Consequences of change and variability in sea ice on marine ecosystem and biogeochemical processes during the 2007–2008 Canadian International Polar Year program

David Barber (), Matthew Asplin, Tim Papakyriakou, Lisa Miller, Brent Else, John Iacozza, C. Mundy, M. Gosslin, Natalie Asselin, Steve Ferguson, Jennifer Lukovich, Gary Stern, Ashley Gaden, Monika Pućko, N.-X. Geilfus and Fei Wang

Climatic Change, 2012, vol. 115, issue 1, 135-159

Abstract: Change and variability in the timing and magnitude of sea ice geophysical and thermodynamic state have consequences on many aspects of the arctic marine system. The changes in both the geophysical and thermodynamic state, and in particular the timing of the development of these states, have consequences throughout the marine system. In this paper we review the ‘consequences’ of change in sea ice state on primary productivity, marine mammal habitats, and sea ice as a medium for storage and transport of contaminants and carbon exchange across the ocean-sea-ice-atmosphere interface based upon results from the International Polar Year. Pertinent results include: 1) conditions along ice edges can bring deep nutrient-rich ‘pacific’ waters into nutrient-poor surface waters along the arctic coast, affecting local food webs; 2) both sea ice thermodynamic and dynamic processes ultimately affect ringed seal/polar bear habitats by controlling the timing, location and amount of surface deformation required for ringed seal and polar bear preferred habitat 3) the ice edges bordering open waters of flaw leads are areas of high biological production and are observed to be important beluga habitat. 4) exchange of climate-active gases, including CO 2 , is extremely active in sea ice environments, and the overall question of whether the Arctic Ocean is (or will be) a source or sink for CO 2 will be dependent on the balance of competing climate-change feedbacks. Copyright The Author(s) 2012

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10584-012-0482-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:115:y:2012:i:1:p:135-159

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-012-0482-9

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().